Once again, China and India are high on the agenda at the World Economic Forum.

But something is different. Once they were seen as promising markets - China as workbench and India as services provider - for Western companies.

The past 18 months have changed all that.

At long last, both countries - and other emerging markets like Brazil - are being accepted as true equals.

What a difference a global financial crisis can make.

'China-centric world'

In previous years, Chinese and Indian executives tended to display a prickly nationalism. Speaking to them, I always had the feeling that they tried to prove their importance.

Not anymore.

There's no choice, you have to build your operations in these high-growth areas
Sir Martin Sorrell, WPP

"Post-meltdown, post-recession, there's a positively different expectation of India," says Anand Mahindra, managing director of automotive group Mahindra and Mahindra.

The power shift is raising expectations.

"India wants to be part of the spec sheet. Are we there when the terms are being set for any major global issue?" asks Mr Mahindra.

In one of the meeting rooms here in Davos, a wall is dominated by a stylised map of the world. It's a look from high above the south pole. Latin America, Africa and Asia loom large.

The US and Western Europe look rather puny. And the UK is a mere speck on the wall.

Once, "the United States could export its recession around the world," says Stephen King, the group chief economist of HSBC bank.

This crisis is different. Emerging economies, especially China and India, managed to avoid the worst of the contagion.

It's "not perfect decoupling," says Mr King, but over the long-term the crisis has sown the seeds for a move towards a "China-centric world rather than a US centric world".

New trading bloc

Stuart Gulliver, executive director at HSBC, sees a new economic bloc emerging that would sideline the US and Western Europe - stretching from China, Asia Pacific, the Middle East and Africa to Latin America.

As a bloc, these countries have "a lot of investable capital, huge commodity wealth, huge production capital and huge demand".

It's an area of emerging countries with so much domestic demand that a crisis in the West may cause it to stutter, but not to grind to a halt, argues Mr Gulliver.

Mr King points to the last three months of 2009, when China's economy (and its exports) rebounded, even when US consumer demand did not.

The crisis has tipped the power balance.

This makes emerging economies a great place to invest, say private-equity investors like David Rubenstein of the Carlyle Group.

Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of advertising group WPP, says that if you're running a global company, "there's no choice, you have to build your operations in these high-growth areas."

China versus India?

But it is here, he says, where China has the edge.

"Without infrastructure it won't work. And that's the big difference between India and China."

Speak to any corporate boss from India, and they will admit that infrastructure problems - and bureaucracy - are holding the country back.

Take Priya Hiranandani-Vandrevala, the chief executive of Hirco, India's largest residential property developer.

Her company builds homes for the emerging middle classes - developments of 10,000 units for 50,000 people - schools, hospitals and sewage plants included.

Getting such a project built can take eight to 12 years, she says, and requires a lot of work.

India's infrastructure is "frightfully underdeveloped," she says, and it is little surprise that "India has the third-lowest cement demand per capita in the world".

But her industry also demonstrates how India's economy is changing.

When the recession struck, the Indian real estate market "completely shut down for three to five months at the beginning of 2009," she says.

Then demand picked up sharply again - driven not by buyers working for Western companies but by truly domestic demand.

After all, according to Rajat Gupta of consulting firm McKinsey, India has the potential for the largest middle class in the world.

India is a country that is turning "one billion people into one billion consumers," says Manvinder Banga, the president of Unilever's global food and personal care division.

It will be these consumers, that will truly shift the world's economic power balance. Maybe not this decade.

nice article to read, yes its true only indian Infrastructure development is in slow process compare to china, in leastwise 1-5. and china is ahead of India in soo much areas, well India is also Ahead of china in some areas. Both are the future powers of world. It Shows how once USA - USSR is in first and second in the world. India mostly behind China due to soo much problems and problem makers(Indian Politicians). For that dont think that there is no problem in China.

The Indian media often overreacts to any positive comment made about India by any Western politician, think-tank analyst, businessman, writer, public personality, etc., and makes it Front Page news when it should not even be taken seriously. Very often these statements are made to be condescendingly polite, and also to rattle the troops back home to wake up to the challenge presented by China and India.

In some cases American officials use data to show the people back home that they are falling behind.

Let me give you an example - One common statement i hear often here in the US is that India and China are graduating 200,000 to 400,000 engineers every year while the US only graduates about 50,000 engineers a year. What US officials dont mention when they say this is that while both China and India graduates tons of engineers, the quality except for the top 10 to 20 schools in India and China is really quite poor. Whereas in the US, the quality is pretty even across the thousands of universities, both private and public.

This type of info is really for domestic consumption. Plus Americans and Europeans are much more self-critical than other Asians in general.

Badguy2000 is right when he says that - when the Western media starts singing your praises all too often, you need to be somewhat wary, and take it with a "grain of salt".

In these times of economic recession in the west, being clubbed with China as a booming economy has negative connotations as well. This can lead to anti-dumping duties, reduction of tax breaks which can hurt our economy.

Do people realize the significance of davos where the top most corporate heads and politicians line up? davos is such a fantastic place to market your self to sell the concept of “India, an investment haven with a terrific roi”, and where else does one get such a wonderful platform to promote yourself where all the key people who are the movers and shakers of world economy and policy making are lined up, man such a place and event is bound to be a dream come true for the marketers, and when I say what I have said one has to realize a lot of business is driven on perceptions formed and then on the experience gained.

People are bound to talk India when it happens to be the only country which has come out of global economic melt down almost unscratched, with not even one question mark put on the real growth rate figures released by India as has happened in case of the prc where a lot of cooking up of figures is the talk of the town, and India has achieved all this tremendous turn around with just 3% stimulus package of gdp as compared to 13% in case of the prc and this in it self speaks volumes about the fundamentals and resilience of the Indian economy.

Here is a quote of kamal nath I take from in one such interview he gave at davos, where he points out the change in tone towards India, and so the comparison between India and the prc inevitable.

“When we first started selling the India story in 1993, we’ve come a long way. Five years ago, Indians were seen, but not heard. A few years ago, Indians were seen and heard, but not engaged with. Now, Indians are seen, heard, and engaged with. Just look at the number of programmes that have Indian speakers,” says Mr Nath, who is himself addressing two special sessions.

not only were there a lot of Indian speakers but a big number of them were co-chairing a lot of events/discussions, with ndtv only the fourth network (after bbc, cnn and one more, don’t recall) allowed to cover the whole event and in the process host India only specific events/discussions with live telecast across the globe, and as kamal nath further goes on to say the discussion point is not just inward investments any more but out bound where India has become a big player.

Promoting your country at an international forum is all well and dandy.
By all means go all out, and promote your country the best you can and bring in as much FDI as possible.

What I am saying is, dont believe everything that any foreign corporate head or politician says about India.
More importantly the Indian Media should not report these comments on the Front Page like its the gospel truth.